Summary

This study attempts to operationalize the concept of local
legal culture by examining differences in the processing of twelve
hypothetical criminal cases in four criminal courts. Questionnaires
asking how these hypothetical cases should best be handled were
administered to judges, district attorneys, and defense attorneys in
four cities: Bronx County (New York City), New York, Detroit,
Michigan, Miami, Florida, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In each city,
the presiding judge, prosecutor, and head of the public defender's
office were informed of the project. Questionnaires were distributed
to prosecuting attorneys and public defenders by their supervisors.
Judges were contacted in person or given questionnaires with a cover
letter from the presiding judge. All questionnaires were completed
anonymously and returned separately by respondents. The variables
include number of years the respondent had been in the criminal
justice system, preferred mode of disposition and of sentencing for
each of the twelve cases, and the respondents' predictions of the
probability of conviction in each case.

Universe

Data Source

Data Type(s)

Original Release Date

1984-05-03

Version Date

2005-11-04

Version History

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.

1997-02-13 SAS and SPSS data definition statements are now available
for this collection.

1984-05-03 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Standardized missing values.

Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented.

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